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An ultra-conservative reading list required by one Alabama school is raising eyebrows and raising concerns among parents.

The right-wing frequently accuses the schools of kowtowing to leftists politics by teaching things like science instead of religion and demanding youth refrain from reading classic literature that depicts a racist American history. But according to AL.com, its the far right that is demanding schools teach their philosophies.

The Baldwin School Board is getting involved after a summer reading list was given to students at Spanish Fort High School by teacher Gene Ponder. The list mandates that students choose one of the books from the list, which range from Rand Paul books to Ann Coulter. It also has Michael Savages 2006 book, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder listed as an option.

While political or controversial books arent unheard of, particularly in upper-level Advanced Placement classes, theyre typically taught alongside the contrasting view point. For example, The Bible is often taught with Edith Hamiltons Mythology. That was not the case here.

Elizabeth Denham, whose son was in the AP class, posted the reading list on her Facebook page and blog saying that she contacted the school out of concern.

I encourage my children to read things they disagree with, she explained. To listen to those with opposing perspectives. To be open to ideas other than theirs, but to stand up for their beliefs respectfully. This list did not encourage that philosophy. It presented one side. And one side filled with pop culture personalities who spew hate and rhetoric not intellectual, respected authors who offer well-educated ideas from different points of view.

While the board has received complaints, Baldwin County school board member David Cox doubted board members will care much.

Generally speaking, I would think that needs to be left up to the individual school with the direction of the superintendent, Cox told AL.com. Though he admitted he hasnt reviewed the complaint.

Thats something we leave to the superintendent and his staff and employees, he continued. Those need to stay at the school level or the superintendent, without board action. Until the superintendent says otherwise, its my opinion that it needs to be left up to him.

The school board president who actually lives in the town refused to comment.

Superintendent Eddie Tyler told the media this week that he did have a copy of the complaint and would review it.

You can see a copy of the complaint sent by parent Julia Coccaro below, which is concerned with more issues than just the book list. It includes the censorship of a yearbook section that removed the coming-out story of an LGBT teen and an incident in which a drivers education teacher who spent an entire class period discussing his personal religious beliefs.

It is also concerning that the superintendent was unable to bring himself to condemn books with titles like Liberalism is a Mental Disorder when there are both liberals and students with mental illness attending classes within the Baldwin County School District, the complaint explains. The parents and students of Baldwin County expect more from our superintendent.

Conservatives have criticized liberals as being snowflakes for their concerns over right-wing, white nationalists and Nazi speakers, however, over and over they oppose what they perceive to be liberal dogma in public schools. In 2015 a Captain Underpants book was banned from a school for having a gay character.

According to the American Library Association, in 2016 they documented 323 attempts to ban books. One had young transgender characters and a series of books by accused rapist Bill Cosby. The vast majority of the books requested for ban contain LGBT related material. In March of this year, a Republican lawmaker in Arkansas sought to ban all Howard Zinn books from public schools. Zinn is known for discussing historically accurate cases of those in the U.S. leaders often oppressed including slaves, women, Native Americans and others.

During the 2015-2016 school year many progressive speakers were banned as well. Transgender-rights activist Janet Mock was protested but not because of the content of her speech, because the Jewish student group Hillel co-sponsored the lecture.

Conservatives also led a national meltdown after a performance art photo was posted by comedian Kathy Griffin showing President Donald Trumps bloody head. She was later blamed by conservatives for the shooting at the GOP baseball park. Similarly, alt-right activists, unaware of the plays message, seized the stage at the New York Theatre during a production of Shakespeares Julius Caesar because the character wore a suit and looked like Trump.

You can read the full complaint from Coccaro below:

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Alabama school requires students to read right-wing authors ... - Raw Story

The discovery of an email thread proving the Trump campaigns eagerness to collude with the Russian government to beat Hillary Clinton has served to underscore what you might call first-order lies that President Donald Trump and his top aides have told over the past yearabout meetings with Russians, collusion with Russia, and even, in the past days, about the meeting itself.

But in a way, the most intriguing implication of the email threadconnecting Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort to the subversion campaignis that it points to a number of under-discussed, second-order lies, which in turn suggest deeper, more nefarious behavior.

It is useful to go back in time and map what we know now onto various key moments in Trumps campaign and presidency.

After U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with high confidence that the Russian government sponsored the theft and leaking of Democratic Party emails, then-candidate Trump escalated his ongoing feud with the intel community by disputing their conclusions out of hand. At a presidential debate, he said Clinton has no idea whether its Russia, China, or anybody else and our country has no idea. He famously said a 400-pound guy in New Jersey might be the culprit.

Now we know that, all along, Kushner, Junior, and Manafort had emails proving Trump wrong, and proving Clinton and the U.S. intelligence community right.

Trump has remained disputatious on this point, even up until last week, when U.S. intelligence services had been working for him for nearly six months. On Polish soil, he told reporters nobody really knows for sure who meddled in the 2016 election, and justified his doubts by comparing the intelligence communitys Russia assessment with the Bush administrations manipulation of intelligence to claim that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction.

Not only was the proof of Trumps unfounded doubts sitting in his son and son-in-laws inboxes, we now know thanks to Michael Isikoffs reporting that, as he dragged the U.S. intelligence community on the world stage, Trumps own lawyers knew of the email and the Trump Tower meeting in June of this year.

Its all very curious, unless Trump has known about the conspiracy all along and has decided to lie about it until the bitter end. Or maybe he just has the worst son and son-in-law in the history of progeny and marriage.

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Ann Coulter has discovered that Donald Trump is a most unsatisfying sock puppet. - New Republic

Conservatives and alt-rightsupporters gatheredat UC Berkeley to protest the cancellation of Ann Coulters speech there, which was originally slated for today.

Journalist Tim Pool live streamed video of the protests. Numerous onlookers tweeted video and photos of the Free Speech Rally.

In addition to the conservative and alt-right protests, the International Socialist Organizations Bay Area chapter coordinated an Alt-Right Delete rally to demonstrate against racist provocateurs.

A right wing activist (right) debates with a UC Berkeley student during a rally at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park on April 27, 2017 in Berkeley, Calif. Protesters are gathering in Berkeley to protest the cancellation of a speech by American conservative political commentator Ann Coulter at UC Berkeley. (Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

During the demonstrations, policeput upbarricades and forbid protesters from entering the UC Berkeley Campus.Officers were equipped with riot gear, and a helicoptermonitored the protests at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center from above.

At 1 p.m.UC Berkeleytweeted that police had made two arrests.

The UC Berkeley student newspaper, the Daily Californian, reported that about 30 police were on the scene and that demonstrators were from across the political spectrum.

Including some other prominent conservatives.

And others.

Coulter, a conservative commentator, had been invited to speak by conservative student groups. Yesterday, Coulter announced that she would not be deliveringher address, even though she had vowed to after the university first canceled her talk over safety concerns and then offered her another date after classes were over. The conservative groups initially supported her decision to come anyway even filing a lawsuit then backed down amid threats of violence, leading to her decision not to show up after all.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks told the universitys community members,

We must make every effort to hold events at a time and location that maximizes the chances that First Amendment rights can be successfully exercised and that community members can be protected. While our commitment to freedom of speech and expression remains absolute, we have an obligation to heed our police departments assessment of how best to hold safe and successful events.

Coulter told the Associated Press via email, Im not speaking. But Im going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country.

To prepare forpotential confrontations,theCity ofBerkeley issued a press release encouragingpeaceful protesters to stay safe at demonstrations and warning against getting baited by provocateurs.

Likewise, Chancellor Dirks issued a message on safety addressed to the UC Berkeley community yesterday.

In the note, Dirks said, Our goal tomorrow, and always is to ensure the safety of those in our campus community while also protecting the First Amendment rights of those who wish to gather on our public campus.

Dirks added, It is likely that the majority of those who demonstrate tomorrow will do so peacefully, but UCPD is aware that there are individuals and groups unaffiliated with campus who have clearly stated their intention to use violent tactics in support of their respective causes.

U.S. airforce veteran Daryl Tempeste during a rally for conservative author Anne Coulter and pro-Trump supporters at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, Calif., April 27, 2017. (Photo: John G. Mabanglo)

The university tweeted a warning about potential issues associated with expected protests.

Over the past several months, UC Berkeley has been at the center of a roiling debate over free speech on U.S. campuses, especially public universities. In February, demonstrations prior to alt-right leader Milo Yiannopouloss planned speech led the university to call off the event, sparking violence.

Nevertheless, at a news conference,UC Berkeley officials stressed theschools commitment to free speech. The assistant vice chancellor for public affairs, Dan Mogulof, said,Everything we have done to date is about facilitating and supporting our student group in trying to make it possible for Ms. Coulter to exercise her First Amendment rights.

Lauren Padilla is a student at Johns Hopkins University and a USA TODAY College digital producer.

Excerpt from:
Ann Coulter didn't show up at UC Berkeley, but protesters did ...

In aNY Mag piece published a few days ago, the publication broke down the rise, fall, and subsequent rise of Steve Bannon. And while the story mainly focuses on how Bannon has influenced President Donald Trump to approach controversy with stubborn defiance, it also provides a lot of information about the behind-the-scenes power dynamics. But perhaps one of the most telling parts was that in the summer of 2015 before Bannon had joined the Trump presidential campaign in an official capacity Bannon called on Ann Coulter and Sam Nunberg to quickly write a white paper on Trumps immigration policies.

At the time, Coulter who vilifies the immigrant community regularly tweeted a link and called it the greatest political document since the Magna Carta. She didnt reveal that she had in a hand in drafting the document, which is important, because the language employed not only helped Trump gain further support, it also informed current policies. According to the Daily Beast, this doc marked the first time that Trumps team turned its hateful rhetoric into an anti-immigration plan.

As The New York Times reported back in August 2015, the paper which is no longer available on Trumps website had three positions. The first stated that a nation without borders is not a nation, and the paper once again asserted Trumps commitment to building a wall between Mexico and the United States. The second principle called for eliminating tax credit payments to illegal immigrants and to give more power to the enforcement arm of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency. The last stated that any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages, and security for all Americans.

The rest of the document proposed ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and making H-1B visas more selective by raising the minimum wage.

Since co-authoring the doc, Coulter has continued to spew hate about immigrants. In the meantime, the words shehelped write still have an impact on the ways in which the Trump Administration is attempting to hurt the immigrant community.

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Excerpt from:
Ann Coulter Co-Wrote the Trump Campaign's Trash Immigration Plan - Remezcla (blog)

Tuesday on Fox Business Networks Varney & Company, conservative columnist Ann Coulter said Republicans on Capitol Hill were slow-walking President Donald Trumps agenda.

She went on to add that they hate Trump every bit as much as MSNBC does.

Coulter said, I do think were getting a little Republican obstructionism with Trump as well. Come on. It takes 51 votes to confirm a nominee, so they put in, what, these blue slips and say, no Im holding. A one-person filibuster? No. McConnell should say youve taken this too far. Were not going to let you put in your blue slips or yellow slips or whatever they call them and have one person stop a nominee. In one case, Thom Tillis, he is going precisely against the Trump agenda. He refuses to confirm the head of the Immigration Service unless he can get a bunch more cheap foreign workers for the Chamber of Commerce.

She continued, McConnell could do something, and also I think some of these Republicans like Tillis ought to be called out.

Coulter added, A lot of them really, really hate Trump every bit as much as MSNBC does and theyre slow-walking everything, and they are not helping him.

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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Ann Coulter: Republican Obstructionists 'Hate Trump Every Bit as ... - Breitbart News